{"id":234030,"date":"2010-01-26T14:00:29","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T19:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.34228"},"modified":"2010-01-26T13:51:43","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T18:51:43","slug":"saab-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/234030","title":{"rendered":"Saab Lives?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saab enthusiasts saddened by the 72-year-old company’s apparent demise<\/a> have reason to be cheer today. General Motors has struck a deal with a Dutch automaker Spyker Cars NV to save the brand. This sounds like a good deal for all parties involved.<\/p>\n

Here’s the news blurb, via Bloomberg<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Spyker agreed to pay $74 million in cash and $326 million in preferred shares in the company that would emerge from the deal, according to the Dutch company. The transaction, subject to Sweden agreeing to guarantee a 400 million-euro ($563 million) European Investment Bank loan for Saab, is expected to close in February and Saab will exit an orderly wind-down process in line with the timetable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is after a deal failed to sell Saab to Koenigsegg Automotive. Initially<\/a>, GM would have gotten nothing out of that deal, but eventually would have been paid $150 million capital if the new Saab turned a profit. So this deal looks quite a bit better for GM. It gets a cool $74 million in cash, plus a sizable ownership stake. And it was about ready to simply wind-down the brand. So from GM’s perspective, this is a no brainer. U.S. taxpayers can collectively celebrate. <\/p>\n

As for Spyker, the Saab acquisition marks a new direction and expansion for the 10-year-old auto company. Up to now, it has specialized in very expensive, high-performance sports cars. It only offered a handful of models of those cars too. <\/p>\n

So the big question is whether Spyker can make Saab a winner again. It won’t be easy: Saab is riddled with debt, so it starts at a disadvantage. The creative minds at Spyker have to redefine Saab, improving on its current models to appeal to more consumers. But it probably also wants to preserve its legacy as a respected maker of moderately-priced luxury automobiles. It won’t be easy, but given Saab’s loyal fan base and rich history, it shouldn’t be impossible either.<\/p>\n



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Saab enthusiasts saddened by the 72-year-old company’s apparent demise have reason to be cheer today. General Motors has struck a deal with a Dutch automaker Spyker Cars NV to save the brand. This sounds like a good deal for all parties involved. Here’s the news blurb, via Bloomberg: Spyker agreed to pay $74 million in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1535,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}